“Aunt Flo”… “That time of the month”… whatever you call it, or don’t call it for that matter, hugely affects our lives as women on a daily basis. (CLICK TO TWEET!!) That is because our menses is a part of our beautiful continuous cycle as women. Being aware of what we experience at different times of our cycles can allow us to care for ourselves preventively.
Making sure you are correctly counting the number days of your cycle is a good place to start. It can help with all kinds of things, from pregnancy prevention, or conception, to helping you to have a more pleasant menses, if you don’t currently experience one. Also, if you see a natural health care practitioner, it can further help them help you with your health. In my work, as a natural women’s health specialist, acupuncturist and herbalist, the information really helps me to understand more fully what’s going on with a woman’s overall health.
To count your cycle correctly, you start with the first day of bleeding as day 1. You count each day of bleeding from there. So, if you the first day you began to bleed was on a Monday, and your cycle continued until Friday, you would have say that you bled for 5 days, (Monday 1, Tuesday 2, Wednesday 3, Thursday 4, Friday 5). Now in terms of the frequency of your cycle, you would continue counting until the next time you began to bleed again, making that first day of bleeding, your new day 1. So, let’s say, the first day of bleeding happened on Sunday, March 1st. It stopped on Thursday, March 5th, and the next time you bled was Saturday March 28th. We would say, you had a 28-day cycle.
There are plenty of ways to track your menstrual cycle, from apps to cycle beads to using a pen and paper calendar. It doesn’t really matter which one you use, as long as it works for you because that means you are more likely to track it consistently, which is most important. Click here for guide to a healthy cycle and check back in for this month’s ovulation blog, “Ovulation as a Cycle”.
Love being a woman,
Dr. Danett
